Coming to the end of my north island trip now and its tongoriro national park i arrived feeling tired and with a bad neck ache so decided not to do the crossing also the weather was very bad and we couldnt go without a guide which was 55 bucks id rather relax for a few days for nice weather and do it for free! so we checked into a nice hostel with a hot tub :-) spent the day relaxing and hoping for good weather. the next day it was evan worse so i did a smaller 5 hour hike through a forrest to a nice waterfall also was a good warm up as i was planning on climbing mount doom and doing the tongoriro crossing in 8 hours and if i miss the bus home its 100 dollers to get another 1 out. the weather was better on wednesday but i heard thursday was sunny all day so decided to wait till then, finaly on thurs i set off i realy had to move fast as i wanted to do mount doom as well as the crossing which should take 11 hours all together and i have 8 hours. started with a steep climb called the devils staircase and i can see why i got to the base of mount doom at 10am so i`d been hiking for 90 mins with 6 hours! left it says allow 3 hours for the mountain plus 4 more hours to complete the track but i went for it anyway. i was already exhausted from the devils staircase and went straight into climbing the mountain i couldnt beleive how steep it was looking up to the top well i couldnt see the top as it was above the clouds after slowly making my way up it got steeper so much that i was now on my hands and knees trying to walk on volcanic sand and loose rock so steep is the hardest thing ive ever done for every few steps i would slide back down again i also decided looking down was a bad idea as it made me loose balance and if i fall backwards im going all the way to the bottom and breaking every bone on the way! my hands were bloody from the sharp rock and at this poing i was shouting and swearing at the mountain some people were looking at me funny but i think they understtod how i felt! i heard someone say its not far now but all of a sudden the clouds came in so after 90 mins of hell climbing im not going to see anything anyway after 1 more big scramble i finaly make great but im so tired and my chest feels tight it hurts to take deep breaths also my legs and arms are full of cuts but the clouds start to clear so i can check out the nice veiw! i quickly drank a bottle of powerade then ran down the mountain what took me 2 hours to get up took me 30 mins to get down i did fall again a few times on the way down. the rest of the crossing was easy after that and got some nice pics although they never do it any justice i eventualy got ahead of time so managed to take a few needed breaks, got back to the car park at 4 with 30 mins to spare so i managed to do the whole thing in 7 hours pretty good considering how unfit i am but its the determination that gets you through! after i bought a nice cold bottle of white wine and spent 4 hours in the hot tub :-)